Helo

Trade unions were formed to protect their own members to of the union members to fight for their rights for their members (Daily Press, 2002) on behalf of the workers to negotiate with the employers in regards of wages, working environment, fair treatments and the other benefits for their members (Aaron Neo & S. Thiagarajan, 2006). In current context in Singapore, there are two types of union membership traditional and general brunch membership with both type of membership getting benefits of non-collective bargaining hence only the traditional members both collective and non-collective bargaining (Chew S B & Aaron N, 2011). In recent years there is a decline of unions’ membership as the trade union density decreases from 30.19% to 17.99% in the year of 1974 till 1999 (Sarosh K, 2002). According to Marcus, in the year of 2001 the numbers of young members stands 5.78% of the total members of 225,000 (2002). There are various reasons that contribute the declination of unions’ membership such as growth of the economy, educational level of the workforce, human resources practices, the perceptions of union and others.

One of the crucial factor would be there is an increase in educational level of the current workforce. According to the Ministry of Manpower, Singapore (2013) the residential workforce’s educational level of the workforce of diploma holders is 28% and the degree holders are 48% recorded on the year of 2012 with the difference of 32% in the year of 2002 (Ministry of Manpower, 2012). In results of the higher educational workforce, there is an increase of the PMET (professionals, Managers, executives and technician levels) in which not the PMEs are not encourage to join the unions as they are considered as an management levels that could influence the organizations for the companies that are non-unionized or anti-unionization organizations and having the rights to control the employees’ movements and there are not much union for the PMEs and to...